The Seeker Read Free Page B

such.
    “Then if you don’t generally do portraits except under coercion, what sort of art do you do?” she asked, as if they had just met inside in the double parlor and weren’t standing in the shadowy chill of her mother’s garden while the party played on with no notice of their absence.
    “I daresay you’ve read Harper’s Weekly and perhaps leafed through some of the other northern newspapers and magazines your father must bring home on occasion.” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “If so, you may have seen my work. The illustrations.”
    “Adam Wade. Of course. I have seen your work in Harper’s .” She stared at the man with fresh eyes. “I should have recognized your name.”
    “Don’t pretend,” Adam said. “I liked you better when you were too upset to trot out your manners.”
    “A lady always remembers her manners.”
    “Tell your young man that.”
    Charlotte ignored his words, refusing to let him bait her. He was the guest. She was the hostess. “No, really. A few months back, in a January issue I think, there was a man on horseback somewhere in the Western regions. He was hunched down in the saddle trying to escape the snow and wind. Just thinking about it now makes me cold.” Charlotte wrapped her arms around her middle and shivered.
    “Quite a compliment to have you shiver just at the thought of the illustration. Believe me, it was every bit as cold as I was able to make it look. But I think your chill now may have more to do with the night air.” He slipped off his jacket and stepped closer to drape it around her.
    He let his hands linger on her shoulders. She told herself to step back from him, but she didn’t move as she soaked up the warmth of his jacket and breathed in his scent. An outdoors odor mixed with a light trace of manly sweat and linseed oil. She wished she could just stay wrapped in his jacket there in the garden until all the guests had gone home. Then she could sneak in the back door and creep up the servants’ stairway to Aunt Tish’s room. Aunt Tish would help her see what to do. There had to be a way to keep her world from crumbling.
    “I’d like to paint how you look right now here in the moonlight. So winsome. So pure.” He moved his right hand off her shoulder and rubbed his thumb down her nose and across her cheek, measuring her face for his painting. The pad of his thumb was rough against her skin, but still she didn’t pull away. “So beautiful.”
    “No one has ever told me I was beautiful. No one but Aunt Tish.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
    “Not even the young man who was with you in the garden?”
    “Especially not Edwin. I frighten him.”
    “Then he’s not much of a man.”
    “I’m going to marry him.” Charlotte didn’t know where the words were coming from or why she was saying them. She felt mesmerized by his eyes on her, measuring her, seeing past her façade, doing what she had most feared he could do. Seeing into her soul.
    “I think not. That would surely be a waste.” His fingertips walked across her face gently probing the shape of her cheekbones.
    “That’s what Mellie says.”
    “A true friend if she tells you the truth.”
    “Do you tell the truth?” Charlotte peered up at him. She thought she would be able to see on his face if he lied.
    “Always. If I know it.”
    “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Knowing it. Recognizing the lies.”
    “And has your Edwin lied to you?” His voice was soft, insistent. “No. It might be better if he did.”
    “And why would that be better?” His eyes didn’t waver on hers.
    “He could tell me he loved me.” She couldn’t believe she spoke the words out loud. What kind of spell was she letting this man’s eyes put on her?
    “Sometimes that is spoken in actions better than words.” He brought his finger over to trace around her lips. “Has he kissed you? Surely he’s kissed you.”
    She just looked at him without saying anything. She couldn’t answer